


i am alive, comes with the tragic

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-05
Updated: 2013-06-05
Packaged: 2017-12-14 00:25:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/830579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the summer of terrible people having sex, but also a remembrance of the summer when they didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i am alive, comes with the tragic

**Author's Note:**

> Title and verse lifted from Ke$ha's "Animal." I heard this song at least two years ago, and it has always been a Damon & Elena song to me, but only now have I been able to use it as total inspiration.

_I am in love with what we are  
Not what we should be_

It's the middle of the night, but every light is blazing in Damon's bedroom, along with a fire on the hearth to combat the unusually chilly June weather they're having.

(Really, Damon just likes having a fire; it's not like he ever really gets cold.)

Elena's naked (his favorite thing), lying on top of him (his second favorite thing), in the middle of his bed (his third favorite thing), and she's giggling like a school girl as she mimics him, "Because _that's_ who I am, Elena!"

She's been poking fun at him for the better part of an hour, in between his fingers and his tongue and his cock being inside her, of course. The only reason she's getting away with it presently is because he can't move. He's all orgasmed-out, and quite content to just lay on his bed like a truly dead person with a beautiful woman for his funeral shroud. 

(There are many, many other ways to go that are not this pleasant at all. Like werewolf bites. Which ironically was what led him to lying on this very bed with this very woman for the first time approximately one year ago.)

He chuckles, but even that sounds weak to his ears. "Well, we've already established that you've just made the most _terrible_ decision, so it's all good." He sweeps his hand up her bare back and she squirms against him, all soft skin and fabulous smiles pressed into his throat, and for the life of him, he cannot remember anything remotely bad at this precise moment.

It feels like it's always been Elena, rainbows, and unicorns. 

(Soon enough that's bound to fade.)

 

 

Elena can't control the tears that leak from her eyes as Damon struggles to get the words out.

"I know you love Stefan, that it will always be Stefan," he murmurs. "But I love you. You should know that."

She does know and it's almost as difficult for her to choke out as it was for him. She has known it in some way that she can't explain for a long time, and the ache in her chest feels like the gaping wound on Damon's arm. The one that will never heal, that cannot close, that cannot be forgotten.

She can't think about that, about the idea that once he's gone, she's going to feel like this forever. She's going to regret every moment that she held back, that she didn't do what she wanted, that she insisted that loyalty to Stefan was all that mattered.

(It did matter; it _does_ matter. It _should_ matter.)

She can't look at his pale, sweaty face and not do it though. She's thought about it, more often than she would even admit to herself, certainly more often than is appropriate considering everything.

She presses her lips to his, and he thanks her. For the least of what she could give him, he _thanks_ her.

(She might have said something she would have regretted, if Katherine hadn't showed up right then.)

 

 

He contemplates the fire, broods over a glass of whiskey, and waits. She'll come back; maybe she'll even smack him again.

Check that, she'll probably beat the shit out of him when he tells her what he really thinks.

It's ironic; all that has passed between them in this last year, and the apology that he had uttered when certain death lay in front of him. He had meant it then; he had done so many things to hurt her, some purposeful, some accidental, all with the same result. But Elena, always forgiving Elena, she would excuse him, like she excuses everyone from their most treacherous acts.

He can't let her do that this time. Because she might really want to be with him, and if she does, she can have no illusions about it. He's not Stefan, he's not good at pretending, and he'll never do it, not effectively, anyway. He could tell her he's sorry, but then something else will come up, some other choice like the one he faced today, and she'll expect him to make the other one, to go the route that he would never take to make her happy.

He just can't do that. Not because he doesn't want to make her happy; everything inside him clamors for Elena's happiness, clamors to be the _reason_ she is happy, wants to go back to that morning when Stefan brought the sire bond news and he had snapped at his brother about the problem being that he, Damon, had been the one to make her happy when things were so hard for her. 

But what he really wants is for it to be real; and he will take her unhappiness with him for the glimpse of reality. He will tell her the truth, and watch her walk away, which is what she'll do if she's smart, and he won't ever wonder again. He'll never have to doubt that she's with him under false pretenses because she won't be with him, and that's better.

After 145 years of falsehoods about Katherine, he won't let one more second of time with Elena be anything but the absolute truth.

(Maybe, in the end, that's exactly why he gets the girl.)

 

 

Death, whenever it comes to her, is something that is simple. It's something that she escaped when she shouldn't have, so when it comes knocking again, she doesn't try to fight it. 

Damon, Damon fights it; or at least, he fights _her_ death. In the end, though, they bury John in an unmarked grave and she continues to live.

And then Stefan tells her Damon's dying. "I figured if you wanted to talk to him...I, I wouldn't wait," he says, grim and determined, at the same time. He tells her to give his brother hope.

(That is perhaps a loaded gun he's putting in her hands.)

All Elena can think as she scans the crowd of movie-goers is that if she can't find Damon, and the sheriff finds him first, no amount of hope is going to matter. Her stomach is knotted painfully and she keeps telling herself it's because of Stefan, it's because of the fact that her boyfriend has gone to the devil himself to find an answer, and she is terrified of what that might be.

This is all true, but when she sees his face, when he sinks his fangs into her neck and calls her Katherine and falls at her feet, she knows it's because of Damon, too. It's the same rise of panic within her chest that she saw in his face two days before when he forced his blood into her mouth. 

She would do anything to keep him alive, and there's nothing, _nothing_ that she can do.

So she laces her fingers through his and coaxes him into her car.

(The whole way to the Boarding House, he whimpers Katherine's name feverishly and Elena keeps saying, "Damon, it's me, it's Elena. It's me, it's Elena. Not Katherine."

When she takes his hand in hers again, and pulls him up the stairs to his bedroom, he focuses on her face and clarity comes. He says her name like a prayer, and that's when she starts crying.)

 

 

Elena's expression when he tells her the bullet was laced with werewolf venom is pretty priceless. In fact, if he had been going for shock value, it's perfection.

(The fact that he'd actually been trying to keep it on the down low reminds him that he knows exactly how ugly this is going to get before it's over. Of all the ways to die: Anything to do with werewolves was definitely not his favorite.)

"We need Klaus...we need his blood," Elena says urgently as she swings away from him, so Damon says aloud what he's already figured out about that; Klaus is too far away even if he cared, which he won't.

And then Jeremy makes himself even more annoying as a dead person, if that's possible.

(Damon runs, because that's what Damon does best.)

 

 

Elena has never felt more like Damon than she does as she stands in her cap and gown and tries to make this stupid graduation matter. She feels like Damon because she knows it doesn't matter, even though it sort of does, and she's just not in a place where she can shit on everyone's moment of happiness.

(She had tried to kill Caroline, and had said a lot of mean things to her, and killed people, so you know, grinning and bearing a graduation ceremony is a small price to pay.)

Damon would never do it, though. That's why he's not even here, he's somewhere else with Vaughn, doing God knows what, dying of a werewolf bite and Elena just can't handle it. She can't text Ric or Jeremy (dead people don't have cell phones) and she's so relieved when Stefan gives her a head tilt and she follows him out behind the bleachers.

All their friends slowly migrate with them, and she can hear the rising panic in Ric's voice, which in some way steadies her. She knows that Ric will do whatever it takes to save Damon, even going against his wishes, which is exactly what she needs him to do.

(She's never, ever been happier to see anyone than she is Klaus Mikaelson.)

 

 

Klaus is snarky, assy, and basically everything that makes Damon want to stake him, but he's too weak. Obviously he can't kill Klaus, since that would be, like, suicide or whatever for all of their vampire line, but it doesn't make the urge disappear.

(Maybe he bites him a little harder than necessary to get the magic blood elixir, and maybe he gives Ric a moment of worry that he's going to retaliate in some unkind way, but in the end, he's not a big dick about it. 

At least, he's not as big a dick as Klaus. But then, who really is?)

They walk back to Elena's car, which Ric had borrowed to come save his ass, and Damon feels the fever recede entirely from his body. "Thanks for not shoving the Cure down my throat," he says to his friend as they get in the car. "Because I woulda had to kill you all over again if you did that."

"Yeah, whatever," Ric mutters.

"Seriously?" Damon antagonizes. "You're going to be mad at me about this? You and Jeremy, World's Worst Back From the Dead people _ever_."

"If you want to be dead, fine, Damon, that doesn't bother me. Even that you'd sacrifice for Elena is kinda noble and all that, but you're being pretty short-sighted about this. After what Elena's been through, your death, and your willingness to walk right into it, isn't going to sit well."

Damon shakes his head. "Elena will understand. How many times has she let herself almost die, or actually die?"

Ric snorts. "Yeah, and how many times have you _not_ been mad at her for it?"

 

 

Slapping Damon's face has always been strangely satisfying. She's done it a lot, and that probably says something truly negative about her, about _them_ , but she doesn't care.

She needs to be satisfied before she goes and gives Stefan the Cure. She needs to have one thing settled with Damon before she settles things for good with his brother. She only has time to be grateful he's alive, and whole, and no longer in pain, and that she can smack his face much harder than she ever has before, because she's a vampire now.

It's not satisfying, it's _glorious_. 

Her arm is still tingling as she presses the Cure into Stefan's palm. And like so many times before, she is with one brother while thinking of the other, but this time, she doesn't feel guilty about it.

_It's okay to love them both. I did._

She does what Katherine never did right: she lets go of the one she wants to let go of.

She marches back to the great room to have it out with Damon, but a memory slows her down, just a little. She can see Matt's face, she can hear him, hear the level of gravity in his voice, _Damon's not with them... I can keep driving to him, or I can turn around and go back to Stefan._

This time, there's no going back.

 

 

Damon hears the door open, but he knows it's not Stefan. He wouldn't be surprised if he didn't see his baby bro for a while, a few months anyway, but he still has the green light go-ahead from him, so he just smiles when Elena comes into view.

His smile fades when he sees the blood all over her clothes, but then she's in his arms, and she mutters something about Katherine and the Cure in between kisses. She shushes his questions with murmurs that she's fine, that he doesn't need to worry, that she just wants to make love and be with him, and, and, and...

He never was very good at focusing on anything that wasn't Elena Gilbert anyway, so it takes no time at all for her to get him naked. She makes a sweep from his head to his feet, her hands and mouth and tongue everywhere he could ever want them.

He's submissive because that's the only way to apologize for not being exactly what she needs, even if he is what she wants.

(It might be that thought, combined with her wicked smile, that makes him come the first time.)

 

 

Elena lies atop Damon's body because the feel of his skin against every inch of her own is soothing. She can feel every proof of life in his undead body, and he's joking with her and being Damon, and she can't remember a moment that ever had this much peace in it.

Knowing the two of them, it can't last; they'll get back to throwing things and yelling at each other eventually, but right now, it just feels like everything she's ever wanted. Before, she was either not brave enough to take it, or the idea that it wasn't even real loomed over them, making it impossible to enjoy. Now, there is none of that; it's just everything that it was the night of the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, plus some other intangible thing that lets them tease each other about how difficult they are.

Elena snuggles into his arms, and he holds her tighter, his lips against the top of her head.

"I love you, Elena," he whispers. _You should know that._

"I love you, Damon," she replies.

_She already is like me!_

_You don't want to be like me._

_That's who I am, Elena!_

_I like you now, just the way you are._

Her lips curve upward and she buries her face in his throat.


End file.
